


Way Back...Way Back...

by Lalakari



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 10:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14830712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalakari/pseuds/Lalakari
Summary: I've been trying to write a story for a good long while! This is my recent attempt short drabble type kind of world building for the Fallout 3 universe of my story mentions of items from other Fallout games but takes place in the Capital Wasteland maybe eventually I'll get to the Lone Wanderer but for now everybody but him!Eventually more characters and hopefully you guys will like what I did with them!The title comes from Way Back Home because most of the stories will start from early life so past to game time I guess!*Sort of Summary*Everyone has heard of the Lone Wanderer but he's not the only one with a story in the Wasteland! These are the people who helped him get where he did and how they got there.





	Way Back...Way Back...

**Author's Note:**

> I did my best criticism is appreciated! I have a lot of notes and try to translate them to story is tough but hope you guys enjoy!  
> Implied kids having kids because Little Lamplight but I'm not showing that off.  
> *Edit look at that a slightly better ending and he speaks!

The moon begins its descent on the Wasteland it is not long before dawn but tonight the sunrise will come too late. A young man stands awake guarding his home and his family. A shack and small garden on the edge of a river, a wife and son, a brother, a niece. He will not survive the night and his family will be destroyed by sunrise. Raiders come as they often do in the Wasteland with numbers and makeshift weapons, unfortunately improvised fire bombs do not require stealth and lend plenty of light to aid in accuracy. 

The surviving adults are a distraction to allow the children a chance to escape and they do but not far enough. A fourteen year old girl with a small pistol is enough for her younger cousin, an almost six year old boy, to reach the river. In the daylight he is not troubled by the water being so close to a river at a young age, without being able to swim, would lead to tragedy otherwise. However, in the dark his footing is less sure, his clothes weigh him down, the panic has long set in, and the current gets the best of him.

By dawn the Raiders earn some supplies, a few half decent weapons, some caps, at least enough food to feed them for a day. As the sun shines down on the ransacked settlement a spear finally quiets the young man, his burnt flesh reminding the raiders that a truly good meal has been far off for some time. The corpses of his wife and brother are looted and the girl is brought back. Her face may be tear streaked but her eyes are hard and defiant. 

She is strong, just as strong as the leader was years ago. The girl is adorned with a necklace of small trinkets - spent ammo, bones, one long yellow claw - taken straight from the raider woman’s neck.  
The boy awakens on the shore of the river alone and confused unfamiliar Wasteland on each side instead of his home. He cries out for his family and hears only echoes. He stands unsteadily and reaches the large rocks rough but warmed by the sun. He is overwhelmed, but the miniscule comfort from the warmth at his back allows him a moment to take in his surroundings. Upriver the flow is similar from whence he came but nothing looks familiar as he looks downriver he sees the small river widen and become rougher. Between his young age and battered state he does not quite realize how lucky he is to have survived making it to the shore before the river widened. 

He cannot go back for there is nothing left. Traumatic memories have already begun to fade to protect his young mind, and the plants that rest along the river provide a pathway. Their dull red petals and tough trailing roots are edible he knows he had them before a warm mash, arms around him, safe. 

Raw, they are bitter and hard, but he gnaws and follows the river and the bloodleaves forward.  
He walks, his clothes are damp and stick to his skin an oversized, faded blue sleeved shirt and hand me down trousers patched and rolled several times. There is plenty of water and bloodleaves to keep away hunger and dehydration. When he tires he rests among the rocks and continues onward, step after step, another bloodleaf in the distance, he could have eventually found another settlement and been taken to an unfamiliar place but relatively safe. 

Unfortunately, he is not so lucky ahead there is a large, broken stone bridge. He doesn’t know what the rusted metal that make up the walls are it doesn’t matter there is a shout and the small hope is crushed, there are people, but they are not safe. He doesn’t know that while these people share the same name as those that destroyed his home they are an entirely different breed. However his instincts, the fear that drives his small legs to run into the wastes away from the raiders and the river have some inkling. 

He has a head start and is small enough to hide among the rocks. His little heart beats wildly in his chest, he manages to stay quiet, huddled amongst the stones. There is no comfort now, they are rough and dig into his back tears fill his eyes he is hidden but nowhere near safe. The raiders prowl the rocks and ruins, they bark and cackle searching for the lost little boy. He doesn’t move from his hiding place until long after they have given up and left. 

When he rises from the stones he is scratched, stiff, and sore and the river’s edge is no longer safe and into the Wasteland he walks in the distance a bent metal tower surrounded by a rusted chain link fence another object to head toward. The gate is rusted shut and bears no real shelter, he is exhausted and curls up amongst the rocks. He falls into a fitful restless sleep, but meager processing of recent events is better than none.

He does not wake when an ant the size of small dog inspects him, antennae twitching slowly, a partially chewed piece of material held in its jaws. This particular ant pays the boy no further mind as it is an ant and has things to do, fungus to cultivate, nectar to excrete. The ant climbs over the stones the boy is huddled near and down the small cliff to its nearby mound named Shalebridge by some ancient maps. 

\-----

The boy awakens again, confused about where he is how he got there and why was he surrounded by four ants the size of small dogs. These ants had followed each other closely throughout the scent trail, and when the second ant inspected the small wayward human the others followed suit, currently they twitched their antennae at the boy their forever cycling tasks postponed for the moment.  
The boy was not truly afraid, the curious ants were nothing compared to recent events. He reached out to touch one of the ant’s heads, the exoskeleton was hard and smooth lined, across its body and segmented legs were pointed ridges, the boy was smart enough not to touch them. The ant was not really bothered, it just began its way down the cliff after the boy touched it and the other ants followed suit. The boy watched them effortlessly climb down the rocks and when he followed them he was not as graceful and added another bruise or two to his collection. He watched the ants crawl into their mound the entrance was well large enough for him to fit into but before he dropped down he poked his head down inside.

The ant tunnel was dim and smelled of churned wet earth, ant cultivated fungus, and long ago decomposed corpses. The boy didn’t mind the odor, the scents mingled and he couldn’t identify most of it anyway, he guessed it was just how ants smelled. He slowly dropped himself inside to catch up with the ants. The tunnel opened up to a rather large cave, ground water seeped into the ants nest from elsewhere the echo of it dripping slowly into a growing puddle below. The boy leans over the puddle to catch the water in his hands and take a few well needed sips. The ants mill about their nest doing their work the boy trailing behind stepping around piles of refuse and scattered fungus. While the boy finds sickly sweet ant nectar that goes down much easier than raw bloodleaves it fills his belly and relaxes him making everything dull and fuzzy he lays down in a bed of ant refuse scattering a few small bones and dozes listening to the ants’ work.  
\-----  
The days bled together, for a short while he stayed within the safe confines of the ant nest following the routine of the ants, helping them with their never-ending process where he could inside, as he was not yet brave enough to venture into the wasteland just yet. Although even to his young mind surviving off sweet ant nectar and water was not as appealing as it was the first day. Eventually, he takes steps towards leaving the ant nest. One night he pokes his head out of the entrance finally truly noticing the bioluminescent fungus, he is uncertain if it is edible, upon cautiously plucking one he realizes while they do not give off much light they stay lit for a good while, several rotations of ants, and an undetermined amount of rest to be more precise after that they begin to dim.  
Once again, he wakes, fills his belly of ant nectar, and quenches his thirst. His few ragged pockets cannot hold water, but they can hold small bits of sweet, chewy ant nectar. He licks the sticky nectar on the outside to lessen the mess that will be created in two of his pockets, while the other two hold glowing green fungus. He leaves out during the afternoon, leaving glowing fungus every few steps, headed towards the next large metal tower he can see.  
\-----  
“Why do I have to do this again, Bell?” A young, scrawny boy whines as he gazes up the metal tower.

“You’re half the size of me, three times skinnier than Bongo, I already told you what we need from up there, and I climbed it! And marked the stuff! And I said so!” The pale dusty teen replies as she finishes tying the knots linking a larger boy -nearly a man- to the smaller boy by several feet of rope. 

“S’not so bad Tim, if ya fall I got your back! And your arms and legs…” The larger boy trails off at a glare and a gesture from the girl. “M’goin’ Bell...”

Bongo climbs the metal tower stopping midway between the ground and the radio parts higher up as Timmy trails behind headed for the top, a tied sack and another few feet of rope around his small frame. His mentor Tinker Bell, true to her word, had already marked the assorted parts attached to the tower with scraps of colored cloth. Those parts that she deemed essential to the projects left to her by Tinker Joe and her own. The boys lower the parts in the sack to the ground and Bell splits her time between scanning the Wastes and emptying the sack of parts and tossing it back Bongo. They would sort it in the tunnel under the cliff later it smelled but it was safe enough for a break and they could store the scavenged parts on the off chance the three of them couldn’t carry everything. Fortunately, by the end of the trip they would have a fourth set of small hands to lighten the load. 

\-----

Tinker Bell had spotted the boy but knew from the older Lamplighters to not startle a Wastelander kid, so she called out to Timmy to get his last part and head down which he was more than happy to oblige. When the two Lamplighters feet hit the ground, Bell informed Bongo of the boy nearby. The boy is at a loss for words when he comes upon the older group of scavenging children a few days alone with only ants for company seemed much longer and humans were harder to deal with.

Timmy, the youngest of the three, is delighted he is finally bigger than one of the boys his age in Little Lamplight and while he knew he would get bigger at some point that meant getting closer to being Mungo and away from his friends. He advanced towards the boy slowly after taking a wrapped cave cricket snack from his pocket. The caves of Little Lamplight were good for two things for certain, the pale red fungus that flushed radiation and the large cave crickets that made the far reaches of caves their home.

Tinker Bell wondered if the new boy could be taught how to enter information on the computer, as Timmy while his hands have the dexterity for repair work and tinkering they aren’t made for electronics that need commands getting locked out of the computer that kept years of Tinker Joe’s and other past Lamplighters knowledge before they went Mungo made for a tough several days. She offered the boy a hopefully reassuring smile and then turned her gaze on the small pile of scavenged parts, finding a Wastelander kid meant a shift in priorities.

Bongo tried to look as harmless as possible, he had been on several scavenging trips and too many foundlings had good reason to fear Lamplighters that looked like him just shy of Mungo, he knelt in the dirt and swept his eyes down the kid who had rather stiffly took the offered snack from Timmy. He looked well fed enough for a Wastelander but he had that haunted look that he had seen before, and knew personally, the kid had lost too much too soon. 

“You’re okay now and you can come with us! We got a lot of food and we can teach you things we’re a hell of lot better than the Mungos out here. What’s your name?” 

The boy blinked, his eyes traveling to the faces of his newly found company. In his mind for a moment he heard voices he longed for, singing, rumbling, laughing and the last in the night yelling for him to run.

“My name is Micky.”

**Author's Note:**

> Can everyone just not talk dialogue is hard! Weird narration is better right?! It might not be presented the best but I WILL get this story out eventually!  
> I fought with them actually meeting and I couldn't get it to sound right so off screen kind of a cop out I know but I was able to move forward!  
> *Edit the posting was more motivation and the start of the next chapter sounded like a better ending than a sort of cliffhanger so yay!
> 
> Does everyone internally screech as they post something for the first time?


End file.
